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families were stricken with sorrow, but the great heart of the State, though overwhelmed with grief, was still loyal to the cause, and more brave men went forward to fill up the depleted ranks.
November 1st the Tenth battalion of Georgia volunteers, Maj. John E. Rylander, at Macon, was ordered to report to General Lee at Winchester, and the First regulars were ordered to Macon.
The Tenth battalion, after some delay caused by other orders, went to Virginia and joined Lee's army at Hamilton's crossing, December 27, 1862, just two weeks after the battle of Fredericksburg, relieving the First regulars, who thereupon went to Georgia.
At the battle of Fredericksburg, December 13, 1862, Georgia soldiers achieved no less fame than in previous encounters.
With the two important epochs of that battle, the attempt to break the line of A. P. Hill's division and the assault upon Marye's hill, the names of Georgia commands are indissolubly associated.
It was the Nineteenth Georgia, of Archer's brigade, Lieut.-Col. A. J. Hutchins commanding, that after gallantly foiling the direct assault of the Federals on the right of Lee's army, was pushed from position by the enemy moving to their rear through a gap unfortunately left between Archer's and Lane's brigades, and it was Gen. Edward L. Thomas who, in the words of A. P. Hill, ‘responding to the call of General Lane, rapidly threw forward his brigade of Georgians by the flank, and deploying by successive formations, squarely met the enemy, charged them, and, joined by the Seventh and part of the Eighteenth North Carolina, drove them back, with tremendous losses, to their original position.’
At the close of the struggle in this quarter, General Hill reported, ‘The enemy having been repulsed at all points, my brigades remained in their original positions, save General Thomas' (Fourteenth, Thirty-fifth, Forty-fifth and Forty-ninth Georgia), which was not recalled from the position it had so gallantly won in the front line.’
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